Nine encoded history states show good revisions 0–3 and 5–6, skipped 4, and bad 7–8, with a pointer to first bad 7. Exit 200 aborts rather than labels. Positions do not show probe order.

git bisect automates a regression search

Automated bisection repeatedly checks a revision and turns the result into a history decision. It can replace many manual checkouts with roughly logarithmic probes on a simple range, but the speedup depends on a trustworthy test. A wrapper that misclassifies missing tools or broken infrastructure can confidently identify the wrong commit. Designing the verdict contract is therefore part of debugging, not merely setup around the search. ...

July 7, 2027 · 5 min · XB Field Notes